Duke, SAS partner to make cardiovascular patient data available to researchers

The Duke Clinical Research Institute and SAS announced that they would provide researchers with cardiovascular patient data that the Duke University Health System collected during a 45-year period.

Researchers will have access to de-identified records from more than 100,000 cardiovascular procedures on more than 50,000 patients who were treated at Duke between 1969 and 2013. The data set is part of the Duke Databank for Cardiovascular Disease and includes patient demographics, cardiac medical history, comorbidities, final impressions and subsequent treatments.

“Open science is good for researchers, good for innovation, and good for patients and the public,” Duke Clinical Research Institute executive director Eric Peterson, MD, MPH, said in a news release. “The question at the center of the open-science discussion is not whether data should be shared, but how we can usher in responsible methods for doing so. Our collaboration with SAS will allow data to be shared for the advancement of public health worldwide.”

The collaboration with SAS is part of the Duke Clinical Research Institute’s Supporting Open Access to Researchers (SOARS) initiative. Previously, the Duke Clinical Research Institute partnered with Bristol-Myers Squibb on a SOARS program that provides Bristol-Myers Squibb trial data with researchers.

“While many support open science in theory, to date, few academics have been willing to actually share their own data,” Michael Pencina, PhD, director of biostatistics at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, said in a news release. “This is among the first examples where academic leaders are actually opening their clinical research data to others. This initiative provides a prototype for the field and is an incredibly important step toward greater data access for researchers everywhere.”